Plus, I'm kind of in a monster-reviewing bug at the moment, as the Yu-Gi-Oh and Digimon pages might be able to tell you. I'll try to space these out a bit, but they're just... so easy and simple to do, y'know?
I did watch Aquaman. It's pretty great, both Jason Momoa and Amber Reed are fantastic, and while the plot isn't anything particularly novel -- it's basically a condensed adaptation of the various different Aquaman origin stories with the many hard reboots and soft reboots he's had -- as a longtime DC fan, I definitely did enjoy myself watching through the movie. Some absolutely fantastic visual effects, a far more light-hearted tone that actually works, and while I wouldn't call it the second coming of Iron Man or anything, it's definitely a movie that's a step in the right direction for DC's pretty messy live-action movies, another one I can safely say is in the "actually good" category. Not a whole lot to say, although the movie definitely could've used some trimming, or at least making Black Manta far more relevant than a character with a well-executed backstory but ends up as a mook that gets taken out halfway through. I also watched Bumblebee, and after the quality of Transformers movie being pretty much crap other than #1 and #4, it's... it's genuinely good! Not trying to be an ass about it, but I guess Michael Bay is the problem, and not the franchise.And part of it is just sort of... drifting off and watching other things. I've mentioned it a couple times in my previous "where I've been" segments, but for the most part, I watched the entirety of the Lost TV show. It's a pretty well-done show if you care a lot about acting and characters (which I do), but it does a pretty poor job, especially in the last season, of explaining the mysteries it's been building up. Also caught up to the final episode of Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, and the finale is... it's neatly bittersweet, and the whole series does end up feeling that way. It was definitely an experience, to say the least. It's definitely going for a dark, bleak tone, and it succeeds in doing so. There are some moments that feel like they're just wangsting it up for the sake of adding more angst, but for the most part, it's pretty solid. I also watched the first ten episodes of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam or so... and it's.. it's somewhat dated and features a pretty unlikable protagonist, but I do like the world-building and seeing some classic Gundam characters and mobile suits do things that I've only ever been privy to via Wikipedia summaries or by proxy in compilation games.
I also watched all 8 DVD movies for Hellsing Ultimate. The animation is wonderful and the action scenes are badass, but the plot isn't the most coherent, especially near the end. Some really great voice acting, though, and the general style and animation make this the #1 example for me for a style over substance show. It was definitely enjoyable to watch, and the sheer amount of effort they put into the animation and voice-acting is pretty damn impressive.
What you might not really know is that I've been getting a whole lot into Kamen Rider for the past half-year or so. My gateway show was Kamen Rider Gaim, and while I initially watched it for the sheer silliness of Kamen Riders who transform into fruit-based samurai superheroes, the writing and acting is surprisingly good, and the hilarity of the English words that these characters shout out while they transform or attack just adds an amazing layer of cheesy, goofy charm that ends up making me really, really enjoy my time through the show. That was around... August or September last year, I think. It's a show I definitely recommend as long as you can get past the silliness.And then I sort of just continued on, watching the then-newest season, Kamen Rider Build. It's got a different tone compared to Gaim, being more of a bizarre mystery show at first and a generic "Armageddon cometh save the world" shonen stuff in the second half that's only really compelling because I was invested in the characters. And then one thing led to another, and afterwards I watched Zi-O... sort of a 'compilation' anniversary season running currently that features cameos and storylines based on previous seasons and riders. One thing led to another, and I ended up watching entire shows of Ex-Aid, Amazons, Wizard and a whole lot of the movies. It's not something that I think I really can take seriously enough (or am well-versed enough) to review on this blog. Maybe after Zi-O's continuity-heavy season ends and whatever comes next, I might review the next, post Zi-O series semi-regularly, but that's just a bit of a talk on what I've been really doing.
Brief thoughts of the series I've watched so far, in the order that I watched them:
- Gaim: Easily my favourite overall. The whole 'fruit superheroes' thing is such a dumb, ridiculous concept, but the actual series turns out to be surprisingly well-told. Most episodes are well-paced, characterization and storytelling is solid, the tone ends up being pretty mature without being too grim-dark. Characters are likable, and they managed to make great use of the ensemble cast. The villains are pretty entertaining, too, and I really do love how Gaim's storyline is very much arc-based, something that the other shows IMO doesn't do quite well. A very solid experience throughout the entire season.
- Build: The first two-thirds of the season I might actually like a lot more than Gaim, if we're being honest. Probably the straight-up coolest concept of all the Riders I've seen, as far as the gimmick goes. The mysterious conspiracy and continual identity crisis is very JoJolion-esque, the tone manages to balance surprisingly serious themes alongside a comedic tune. In my opinion it sort of goes somewhat downhill for the last 5-10 episodes, where the pacing is a bit inconsistent, but manages to still stick the landing.
- Zi-O: Basically a show that's my 'gateway' to seeing other shows, because I watched Zi-O right after I finished Build and have been following it weekly, and I enjoy being utterly baffled by this compilation-crossover season and sort of experiencing the concepts of the previous shows. The actual Zi-O show is... it's done well, but my favourite characters end up being the guest stars. Especially Decade.
- Ex-Aid: The most stupid-looking and weirdest Kamen Rider visually, which... actually ends up making Ex-Aid one of my favourites, visually. It's just such an earnest show, with such a hilarious combination of concepts (medical drama and video games!). The cast is charismatic, Dan Kuroto is amazing, but like Build, I feel like the show sort of lost sight of what made its first half so great in its second half. The random resurrections at the end also does hurt the drama a bit. Still, Ex-Aid overall ends up being so utterly charming and has such a fun cast that I probably rank Ex-Aid as my second-favourite series so far.
- Amazons: The exact opposite of... everything on this list, honestly. It's the grimdark Netflix version of Kamen Rider, and... and I also love it! I'm a man of many tastes. I love season one, anyway, which I thought handled the concept of what's basically Tokyo Ghoul meets Kamen Rider pretty damn well. The second season is... a bit messier and while I like the experimentation with changing a protagonist JoJo style, it ends up kinda... struggling to balance telling its own story while also doing this whole "what changed in the timeskip" thing? I still like it, though, and Alpha's pretty damn col.
- Wizard: I really love the design of Wizard's trenchcoat aesthetic, the soundtrack is great, and the cast is... extremely charismatic. That's about all the praise say about Wizard, though. The charismatic cast made me sit through the 50+ episodes pretty well, but it's around two-thirds through the series when I realized that Wizard is basically just doing what Ex-Aid, Build and Gaim did in their first ten episodes all the way to the end. The last... oh, three or four episodes is exciting as all hell, but the entire series just ends up being a well-crafted concept that never actually evolves after being set up. It is admittedly a fun show to just play in the background during a slow work day.
I could probably talk a bit more about each individual series. Oh, I could. But I'm not going to at the moment. Basically, I'm working my way through a bunch of the crossover movies and shit, which are just simple dumb fun, but then I'm thinking of watching a couple of the older ones. I had wanted to work my way backwards, but neither Fourze, Drive nor Ghost really appealed to me all that much. I suspect I'll watch them eventually, but for the moment they're mostly just tolerable in small doses in crossovers. Faiz/555, W/Double and Ryuki have been recommended a lot as more serious shows, while I'm also curious about the extremely-popular Den-O and the notoriously-disliked Decade.
Speaking of live-action shows, I watched Kakegurui, the live-action adaptation thereof, due to it starring some of my favourite actors from Kamen Rider Gaim and Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, and it's... it's pretty fun! I'm actually somewhat surprised to find that it has a long-running manga with multiple spinoffs, and two anime seasons, the second of which is running this year! We'll see if I will watch any of those. It's a gambling series similar to Kaiji, but it takes place at a high-stakes school and the live-action adaptation really, really loves hamming things up. It's wonderful.
Other stuff I did but didn't have time to review? Cells At Work (Hataraku Saibou), which I actually did talk about a little in the past. It's a short season, but so utterly charming and fun to watch, and animated pretty beautifully. I also ended up looking up the manga, and while I'm not super caught-up, it's been a fun, light-hearted ride.I actually ended up being recommended a couple of anime that aired last season. I had initially intended to review these shorter anime seasons, thinking that it's just going to be pretty simple like Overlord, but... just turned out that I didn't have the energy, and just sort of enjoyed watching an anime without having the burden of trying o judge it and review it. Goblin Slayer started off as one of the most controversial animes due to its first episode featuring some rape, but turns out that the rest of the season played out relatively benignly. Lots of gore, and lots of sexual themes, but it's nowhere as dark as the first episode made it out to be. The writing was... simple, but to the point, and as always I enjoy the D&D-themed setting and the general voice acting and art style. It's sort of a more... obvious storyline, I suppose, not doing anything particularly novel beyond its concept, but I definitely do appreciate it.
I did a binge-watch of the first four or five seasons of critically-acclaimed web animation series RWBY. It's... it's neat! I kinda feel that it might be overrated by some people, but I definitely understand the love poured into this franchise. Might consider doing reviews of the current season, season six, which I haven't watched at all. We'll see.
Also, somewhere in December, I tried to play Artifact, the Dota card game! I love Dota, I love TCG's, and I really wanted to try my hand at this funky 'complex' game, but it's... well, I don't like to call something just flat-out 'crap', but Artifact is... it's such a shoddily designed game, and for all the hype that everyone built up about how even if you have to spend a lot of time, brain-power and potential money into the game, I tried playing the game with my friend's (actually quite well-off) account.... and, wow, what a poorly-designed game. It's not so much skill-intensive as utterly boring. Hearthstone is far from being a perfect game, but that's so, so much more of a well designed game than Artifact. I could go on a long, long rant about Artifact, but even then I feel that's more than what the game deserves.
So... yeah. This is sort of an apology for my rather inconsistent schedule and a mega-summary of what I've been watching for the past four or five months. I'm legitimately not sure where we'll go from here, although I suppose the CW shows will end up coming back soon, allowing me to have some more light-hearted superhero stuff to talk about. I'm about to start watching Hunter x Hunter's 2011 anime for the first time, and while the schedule for that's going to be... somewhat inconsistent. Just trying to figure out different things to do on this blog that doesn't feel like actual work, I suppose.
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